Harvey's Australian Algal Exsiccatae

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William Henry Harvey (1811-1866), the Irish phycologist spent six months travelling around Australia in the 1850s collecting marine algae/seaweeds. He collected over 20,000 individual specimens which he painstakingly pressed and identified. Harvey published his five volume set of Phycologia Australica in which he illustrated 300 species in magnificent colour.

The frontispiece to Phycologia Australica is a magnificent illustration of Claudea elegans (see below right), and next to it is the specimen he collected which looks remarkably similar (below left). Harvey had a numbering system and a locality code to keep track of the many pressings and collections. This was always pencilled onto the bottom left hand corner of the sheet on which the alga was pressed. Sometimes, Harvey would write this code on the back of the sheet. The numbers (1-601) correspond to the master list of names that accompanied each set of exsiccate distributed. We have updated many of these names based on recent nomenclatural and taxonomic changes. This list is updated regularly.